55. Mistaken

It’s probably happened to everyone at least once.

What the — I only slept three hours?

Those mornings when you drag yourself back down and strain to fall asleep again. And when there’s simply no chance of dropping off, most people just grit their teeth and slog through a foggy, half-dreaming day.

Better get some more sleep.

But beside my pillow, a sleeping pill was always waiting, there for exactly those moments. That was how much sleep meant to me. Never just rest.

A character lived or died by a tenth of a second. A little more sleep or a little less could decide whether a raid was won or lost, so I’d honed my body clock until it ran as precise as a machine, tuned so finely that I could gauge the whole day’s condition from the split-second sensation of waking.

But now that my consciousness had returned, that once-precise clock lay shattered. My eyes were open, yet it took several seconds for the world to settle onto my retinas. Time itself was tangled like a snapped reel of film, and I couldn’t get a grip on it.

Just how long had I been eroded away in the abyssal dark of Lucius’s mind? Was I still unable to climb out of the trauma?

Lucius lay beside me, sleeping soundly, a peaceful look on his face.

Now that I see him up close, he really is ugly.

I lay there gazing at him in a half-dreaming daze.

“…ng Master! Young Master!”

A familiar voice tore through the silence. Only then did I realize my head was pillowed on someone’s knees. I raised my gaze to find Elli’s face, the rims of her eyes flushed red. The moment our eyes met, her tears broke like a dam and fell, drop after drop, onto my face. The instant I saw them, my severed sense of reality came rushing back and dropped a heavy anchor.

“And here I thought you weren’t even glad to see me come back.”

Even at my teasing little joke, Elli couldn’t manage so much as an answer; she only poured out more tears. At this rate she was going to soak my whole face.

“I’m not dead. I’m perfectly fine, so stop crying.”

“…Yes, Young Master.”

After barely managing to calm her down, I slowly pushed myself upright. The muscles I’d expected to be pitifully stiff answered with surprising suppleness, and when I stretched and twisted this way and that, an unexpected sensation swept through my whole frame.

My condition isn’t bad at all?

It wasn’t just “not bad.” The two-day marathon from the house to the Abyss, running like I was about to die; the overload that had slammed my body fighting the lower demons at the first gate. And on top of all that, the [Overclock] I’d wrung out to land the finishing blow on Lucius.

“How long has it been?”

“Two days have passed.”

“…Two days?”

My lips parted slightly. Well, there was no such thing as a free lunch. The time I’d spent inside Lucius’s trauma had cost two days.

Am I supposed to call that a good thing?

Two days was more than enough for Valerian to have cleared the place and then some.

Can’t be helped.

I’d talked a big game, but there was no closing a two-day gap.

More to the point — how can I be in this good a condition?

I couldn’t believe all my fatigue had vanished after just two days of sleep. They say sleep is the best medicine, but if two days of solid rest could heal a dying body, what reason would hospitals have to exist in this world?

As if to answer the question I was holding, a blue holographic chat window flickered to life before my eyes.

For some reason, Eve carried on with her head held unnaturally high and stiff.

According to Eve, the instant I’d swallowed the flower I’d lost consciousness. The moment I went under, my fingertips had begun to stain pitch-black, as if someone had sprayed squid ink across them, and that inky color had crept on and seized my whole body bit by bit. Right up until a few hours ago my entire body had stayed black as charred coal, but at some point the color had drained away as though it had all been a lie, and I’d returned to myself.

That’d be when I resolved Lucius’s trauma.

The day to talk about his past would come eventually. I clenched my fist and opened it again for no real reason. And listening to Eve, I realized something about my body felt off.

She must have already finished her scan, yet she drew the moment out.

The kind of preamble that starts with “don’t be alarmed” almost always leads somewhere you can’t help but be alarmed by.

I braced myself inwardly and gave a light nod.

Hold on. Come again?

So it’s true that poison, used right, becomes medicine.

Fight poison with poison. I’d done exactly that, subduing one poison with another. If Eve was right, then the toxic energy Lucius had been harboring had, like a predator, devoured every last one of the curses lodged in my body.

In the end, from the eyes of an Eve who’d been so stubbornly holding her head high, a single restrained tear slipped loose. This time, too, she hadn’t been able to follow me. While I wandered alone through Lucius’s trauma, all Eve could do was stay behind in cold reality and watch over me by herself.

You went through a lot too.

I only murmured it quietly to myself, not bothering to say the words of comfort aloud. It might sound heartless, but situations like this were bound to keep coming for us. Looking back on Lillian’s case alone, I knew the time spent by the one left behind was never a light thing. And for Eve, whom no one but me could even perceive, that time must have been a prison of pure silence. Even as Elli and Leo traded worried words over my collapsed body, Eve had had to bear her isolation alone, unable to show a flicker of it to anyone. Hers was a sentence of silence, a stretch of holding on in a world her voice could never reach, wishing only that I’d open my eyes again.

I gazed at her without a word, because I didn’t know what to call this emotion, or what comfort could ever reach her loneliness. All I could do was watch her until her tears finally came to an end.

The heir’s seat is well and truly out of reach now.

The reality came crowding in and cooled my head. It’d be a lie to say I wasn’t disappointed, of course. The seat of House Arne’s heir meant something far beyond mere honor. But when I tallied it all up, the whole affair was no losing deal.

First of all, the lethal curses that had been gnawing at Arden’s battered body had vanished without a trace. That was a harvest I couldn’t have traded for any treasure.

Even though the black mist that had wreathed my body had cleared, the inside of me was still empty. I spread my palm and tried to read the currents in the air, but no dramatic spectacle of snatching up mana the way you’d gather ki ever came.

Once I get back to the house, I’ll have to learn from Seraphina and Lillian.

There was so much magic I wanted to try.

Of course, Arden’s body isn’t S-rank, so there’ll be limits.

Either way, the impossible turning possible was an enormous change.

Man, I’m getting all worked up over nothing.

Anyway, setting the happy daydreams aside, the biggest gain of all lay elsewhere. We’d confirmed that Lillian’s ability worked even against demonified NPCs, and that alone meant I now held an enormous variable, one that could haul the world back from the brink of ruin.

Still, to think even a demonified Lucius was no match for him at all.

Was there an unbridgeable wall between brothers? Valerian had held back because of my request not to kill him. Had he gone at it in earnest, Lucius would surely have died.

The Valerian of the original history shouldn’t have been this strong at this point in time, surely.

It was as if he’d skipped the plateau every strong person inevitably runs into. Either way, I gave Valerian’s skill its due.

He might have made it back to the house by now.

Wasn’t he probably on his way back already, having beaten down the Abyss’s final boss? One way or another, moving fast was the better play. I couldn’t stay here forever.

Reading my expression, Leo and Elli were already hurriedly packing, gathering up their share of the luggage to set out. I kept my eyes fixed on Elli as she worked.

If we go back to the house, Valerian will probably want to keep Elli at his side.

I’d heard her contribution to passing the Trial of Wisdom had been considerable. She’d most likely be recognized for it and formally placed into Valerian’s service, since he wouldn’t let go of a talent who’d helped his own growth.

Becoming a close attendant to the man destined to be the future head of the house — that’d be far better for Elli’s future, too.

In that case, a House Arne with Valerian as heir might not be so bad after all. Elli was the kind of person who carried that sort of brightness.

“When we get back to the house, look after Brother’s side well.”

“…Excuse me?”

My plan had already been revised.

The moment I’m back at the house, I’ll head for the Empire with Lillian.

Just because I’d missed the heir’s seat didn’t mean I could sit back and let the Empire fall to ruin. As if I’d watch it perish and do nothing.

“What on earth are you talking about?”

Elli’s face crumpled, and then she spoke.

“…I’m—”

Her voice trembled violently.

“I’m your maid, Young Master. That’s an absolute fact that will never, ever change, not even if I died and came back to life! So why do you keep trying to foist me off on someone else?”

It didn’t take me long to realize the trembling wasn’t fear but a fury that had risen all the way to the top of her head.

“No, I’m not foisting you off… Isn’t this a good thing for you too? It’s a job with a guaranteed future.”

My flustered answer was the fuse that lit it all.

“You really thought that would make me happy?”

Elli dragged in ragged breaths, then took the enormous shield slung across her back and slammed it to the ground as if hurling it.

CRASH—!

It was a roar loud enough to set the whole cave ringing.

“…Draw.”

“What?”

“Draw your sword. Young Master.”

Elli’s hand gripped the shield’s handle hard enough to crush it. Veins stood out on the back of her hand as it shook and trembled. This was no joke.

“Hey, Elli! What’s gotten into you all of a sud—!”

I didn’t even get to finish.

Fwsh—!

The enormous shield split the air and came shooting up right under my chin.

“Th-this lunatic…!”

I instinctively threw my upper body back, opening up distance.

CRASH! KA-CRASH!

Elli’s shield gouged ferociously into the spot I’d vacated, and where it met the wall, rock fragments scattered in every direction. I couldn’t bring myself to draw my sword, so I threw myself entirely into evasion. But by the very nature of a shield, its attack range was wide, and the instant I thought I’d dodged, its edge sealed off my escape route perfectly and closed in.

No way.

Awe and astonishment, one after another. A thorough, destructive charge, as if she meant to ram an entire mountain head-on and shatter it. Facing down a bear would probably feel like this.

KA-BOOOM!

In the end, with nowhere left to dodge, the moment I flung myself to the side, Elli twisted the angle of her shield and caught me square in the abdomen.

“Gurkh!”

I tumbled and crashed down in a graceless heap. My vision flashed white and my throat burned hot.

“…”

Elli looked down at me where I’d collapsed and readjusted her grip on the shield. In the very instant a second blow seemed about to come flying, Leo, who’d been watching from the side, sauntered out at a leisurely pace.

“Young Master, there’s one thing I forgot to mention.”

“…”

“We were a bit mistaken about something, it turns out.”

Mistaken.

Yeah. Just as Leo said, it seemed I’d been badly mistaken. Because if she’d really been off flirting with Valerian, there’s no way she’d have gotten this strong. But would it have killed him to say something a little sooner?

Agh, that hurts.